For decades I have paid my bills by writing, in all formats. Mostly, my prose is presented under a company’s logo or by someone else entirely. But writing as work made me forget that it’s fun.

Personal blogging is new for me. Putting my musing out there, in my own name, is leap of faith. And when I published my first post in March, it was a tentative toe in the web’s water.

Thank you for reading.

I was blown away to see that 450+ people regularly read my ramblings. Your responses, online and offline, have led to some really inspiring, encouraging, heart-warming discussions. Thank you, from someplace deep within me.

I began blogging for me. But being heard, understood and appreciated has been an unexpectedly lovely side-effect.

My blog is finding it’s place.

I began this blog without a clear purpose. But putting myself out there is changing my life.

It’s helping me to clear my head and create, for your consumption.

I am enjoying the discipline of writing regularly. It has helped me to find routine in my new freelance schedule. And satisfaction too.

Blogging is helping me to overcome my perfectionism. I have a million unfinished tasks weighing me down because I want to do them properly. And this means I actually do nothing way too often. Perfect really is the enemy of good.

My inner critic stops me all too often, by convincing me that everyone else is more creative, clever, talented, worthy… but bollocks! I also know that it’s not about the best, it’s about who gets it done. And so I am aspiring to be a completionist. And I feel much more accountable knowing you’re on the receiving end each week.

This blog is also an exercise in consistency for me. I am great at starting things, but not at sticking to them. I bore easily. There’s always something shinier that catches my eye and I’m off down that rabbit hole before I’ve wrapped what was underway. So I am curious to see whether I can stick with this little blog. Time will tell.

Blogging demands uncomfortable levels of self reflection for me. Naval gazing has been something I have actively avoided in the past while I glorified busy. But I am learning that reflection and gratitude are key to happiness. And I want to recognise joy more often, and therefore chase it less.

We must stop glorifying busy, for everyone’s sake.

Life’s frantic pace often sees us squishing our social interactions into sound bites. I fear we’re losing the art of lolling, day-dreaming and in-depth conversation.

I believe that the explosion of counselling/coaching services in recent years is a direct reflection of our inability to make time to really listen to each other day-to-day. We are now paying people for their attention. Bit sad really.

This blog is a way for me to share my learnings in more than Twitter’s 140 characters, a status update, or a coffee break worth of chatting. A kind of free therapy I guess.

I hope it helps you to slow down too, even if only momentarily, and that it makes your heart smile.

Great breakthroughs, inspired art, real progress, and happiness all require us to be still, tune-in, reflect and be grateful. And this is bloody hard when our task lists run to multiple pages and we’re spreading ourselves wafer thin.

My new (financial) year’s resolution is one post per week, for a year.

Let’s see where that takes us.

It’s noisy out there (WordPress alone has more than 63 million blogs!) and so I am very grateful that you’re reading my ramblings.